Former Shortland Street star faces Hollywood backlash for film

Karl Urban's latest movie is poised to join a rarefied but undesirable Hollywood club.

The Kiwi stars in Hangman alongside Al Pacino and Brittany Snow.

Despite the lure of Oscar winner Pacino, the movie had yesterday earned a 0 percent rating on critics aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

Urban, who is on screen in Taika Waititi's Thor: Ragnarok, plays a criminal profiler who teams up with Pacino's veteran homicide detective to catch a serial killer terrorising a city with a macabre version of the children's game hangman.

A critic for the Village Voice said: "You may not take a single frame of this movie seriously, especially whenever Pacino is shuffling around, waving a gun and talking like he's desperately in need of a mint julep."

Film critic Mark Dujsik lampooned the feature as "dull, dumb, and overly familiar".

Last year, director Johnny Martin said the film - which does not yet have a New Zealand release date - was "amazing and will appeal to a wide audience".

But the Hollywood Reporter's review opens: "Plenty of former A-list actors - including Bruce Willis, Nicolas Cage and Antonio Banderas - have succumbed to the lure of easy pay cheques in direct-to-video thrillers. But it's particularly disappointing to see Al Pacino sink to those depths."

By late last night, the film had crept up to a 7 percent rating - but the single digit rating still leaves it among an embarrassing roll of dishonour.

- This article was first published on nzherald.co.nz and is republished here with permission.